Thank you to dre at Grackle & Sun for nominating me for the One Lovely Blog award!

This will be the only dose of fiber this week – I’ve been sewing curtains, but not thinking enough about them first – a blue curtain throws in awful cold blue light… duh. But it looks pretty snazzy at night with the lights on.

And now, I will give my acceptance speech.

I once got a (real paper) letter from a classmate with whom I wanted to be friends, but she was the elementary school equivalent of being out of my league. My mother broke the sad truth that it was a chain letter, and a particularly difficult one because the rule was to send it to 25 people, and living in a rural area, this popular classmate had probably run out of preferred recipients at around no. 17. It promised good fortune and riches if I passed it along, but alas, I didn’t know 25 people, even if I included the kids who ate glue, so I have lived my life without riches, though perhaps with some fortune since things could always be worse.

So I’m a little conflicted about participating in these blog activities that feel a teensy bit like a chain letter – yes, I’m honored that someone thought about me, but my non-conformist self said to just say thank you and do no more, but I’ve enjoyed living vicariously through other bloggers as well as benefited from their comments and support, so I’m game for this today.

The rules are:

Thank and link back to the person who nominated you.

List the rules and display the award.

Include seven delightful facts about yourself.

Nominate 15 other bloggers and let them know about the award.

Follow the blogger who nominated you.

(I was already following dre, so here goes the rest of it.)

7 things some of you don’t know about me already, probably none of which are delightful:

1. I’m not a picky eater, but there are many many things that I’d rather not eat (we’re talking actual food here, when it comes to packaged/fast food, I don’t eat that shit). Example: I was invited to dine at a lovely person’s house last month. She served venison-stuffed peppers with tomato cream sauce. I am a good sport and it was delicious, but I spent the rest of the evening in a rictus grin from gut pains and stifled farts. So I don’t eat peppers and cream unless I’m at home, and generally don’t eat the larger animals at all.

(I’m tempted to make this an entire TMI list, but most of it would involve my GI tract.)

2. I barely have a cell phone and it ain’t smart. I’m mildly addicted to lurking on other’s Instagram accounts, but I can’t make one of my own though I’d like to have one. I don’t want a computer in my pocket (even though most of those things wouldn’t fit in my pocket). I hate marketing and fees for nothing – a small fee for infrastructure is okay, but otherwise those things just make other people rich. And they’re hell on the environment – charging that shit (made by tiny children) constantly and tossing away the old. Maybe I should start my own marketing campaign that your smartphone runs on coal – icoal. Or fracking – ifrack. Or nuclear – inuclear.

3. I used to have a largish (but round) mole on my cheek. The kids in junior high school called me “Mole Face.” I had it excised by a plastic surgeon. Then the kids called me “Scar Face.” I kinda wish I never had it cut off, but I’m sure it would be sprouting wiry shit by now.

4. I like true crime/mystery stories – to read, watch, or listen – though I’m sometimes ashamed about it. If someone went through that hell with a family member or friend, it would be a vile entertainment genre to face again and again. But count me in as one of the devoted Serial listeners, and don’t bother me first thing on a Thursday morning.

5. I think I make a decent pot of chili.

6. Though I’ve been a card carrying member of various counterculture and arts scenes since my tweens, I don’t have a tattoo – I never could decide what I wanted to have for the rest of my life and I didn’t want to spoil the blank canvas that is my body and could have ended up immortalized on canvas.

7. I’m pissed off that the USA seems so stupid these days, but we need to lighten up and have more silliness.

And I really don’t want to have pass this along to others in the sense that they may feel obligated to do this too, or that I’m singling them out in a stalkerish way, but I’ve found blogs I enjoy from others posting their blogrolls or through things like this, so this is more about what I’ve been reading minus several written by people I know in real life that might reveal my secret identity, and a few that dre already mentioned, and a few that I stopped reading when the writer had a baby and now it’s just all about the freakin’ baby, and several bigger knitwear designers that I assume many already know (like Kate Davies), and a few from dyers and fiber suppliers I patronize, and a few I’ll pop over to read from time to time via ravelry and aren’t on the top of my head now. But I have to be honest that I’m not a huge blog reader – I’m distracted easily for better or worse and I’m trying to reign that in; and I care about the many injustices of our day, but can’t feed those flames too much without boiling in my seat, so I stick to the lighter subjects of fiber and travel and the shorter picture-heavy blogs for the most part.

And for the record, I haven’t really vetted most of these, nor gone back and read every post, so if there are some right-wing nutjobs in the mix, I didn’t realize it.

So let me state again, these are the blogs I’m either following or read fairly often via ravelry right now that I am in no way pressuring to participate in such shenanigans:

completely cauchey – I love her work, but most of all I love her drive, creativity, and amazing feats of productivity

dayana knits – she’s a “Rowan Ambassador” and I often like Rowan patterns, so I think about making some of the things she’s made, and her notes will probably be extremely helpful.

Drawn the Road – this blog is just sketchbook pages, and it blows my noggin.

eggton – I don’t often read food blogs and I can’t remember how I bumped into this one – perhaps it was recommended via wordpress, but she’s good for some laughs (and cute dog pics too).

A Ervilha Cor de Rosa – beautiful pics of Portugese woolmaking – I don’t always translate it, so I assume she’s talking about that too.

L’AquiLANA – Valeria makes the lovely wool I’ve brought home from Italy, and Antonella at I Campi di Mais often makes delightful things from it.

Lime Scented – another woman I bumped into via ravelry and realized I read most of her blog entries, so I started to follow – she gives a lot of good knitting and sewing tips, especially in regards to fit that I have every intention of going back and digesting, and I appreciate her occasional bits of feminism.

peoplecake vs. yeti – I’ve been known to publicly (and perhaps unfairly) malign millennials but she is just so damn positive and her enthusiasm is contagious (and she has a cute dog).

shutterhoney – I click on this one through ravelry fairly regularly – she posts pics of interesting art and her own knitting – just a pic and a few words – refreshing.

soknitsome – we seem to share a love for self-striping socks and she’s just hopped continents.